Dursleys are Prophets
by reinforced hell
Summary: Premis: In which Harry falls through the Veil (because it's ALWAYS the damn Veil) and lands in Manhattan. The kicker is: he was directly infected by everyone's favorite virus. He just doesn't know it yet. Rating may change due to the sheer level of gore I intend to put in here, because of [Prototype].
1. Chapter 1: Fragile Glass

**A/n: Premises: In which Harry falls through the Veil (because it's** _ **always**_ **the damn Veil) and lands in Manhattan. The kicker is: he was directly infected by everyone's favorite virus. He just doesn't know it yet.**

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 **Chapter 1: Fragile Glass**

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Harry found out the hard way that it was agony to have your existence torn asunder by an ancient and mysterious artifact. See, when one breaches the veil between realms, nature tends to take exceptional attention and consideration to make the instigator _not_ do so _ever_ again.

Thus, Harry's agony; pain is the most effective teacher, however inconsiderate it may be.

Sire, it's true that Harry wouldn't _die_ in the process, but that just meant there was a wider range of _learning_ that could be done.

In order to understand _why_ Harry was undergoing the most excruciating pain in existence, a rewind must be used.

* * *

When Harry had finished the war off by cutting a snake's hear (Voldemort as the head of the Death Eater snake), he had went back to study at Hogwarts and finish his education.

It turned out that he was a pretty good student, too, when he wasn't under constant fear for his life. Hermione was ecstatic.

Hermione wasn't the only one that'd noticed, too, as his NEWTs had gone out to various prospecting employers. Such an employer was the Department of Mysteries.

Now, originally Harry had his sights set on becoming an Auror. However, under the assumption that an Auror was like a police officer, he understood that an Unspeakable was more like an Agency like MI6. Where one would deal with the visible threats and therefore gain recognition for it, the other would bring down the threats that needed to stay under cloak and dagger, and thus not garner any _more_ recognition for it. Well, publicly, anyway.

He chose the latter.

It turned out that Harry was inordinately efficient in his chosen career. Considering his unique and constant threat-filled upbringing allowed him to envision various innovative uses for spells not normally suited for the task at hand, he flew through the magical training sections. Weather Harry liked it or not, he was used to leading others, thus had quickly climbed the ranks to handle more and more responsibility. He had taken the skill of delegation like a fish to water, so he was never too busy that he cracked under pressure, and had a stubbornness to complete any task with some problem solving skills thrown in, in case he had to be directly involved in a matter.

It was no surprise it didn't take long for him to rise through the ranks, all the way to the top, gaining the title of Director of the Department of Mysteries.

Now, as a side note: the Director of the DoM was the only position in the DoM that required the outside to place a name to a face. However, to maintain ultimate independance, the Director's name never changed unless the Director, in official capacity, died publicly. As it was, they had only ever gotten to the third letter of the Alphabet in the 500 years of operation excellency.

Now, to get back to why Harry was in excruciating pain; he had become disturbingly interested in the Veil of Death in his career.

Duch was the unhealthy obsession (as Directors are want to have) of an intelligent wizard that he began experimenting with it. Now, unfortunately, Harry Potter, AKA Director Croaker, had increased much. Not bad luck, nor good luck, just luck.

He ended up slipping, and fell into the Veil of Death. Luckily he shouldn't die from it due to the types of experiments being done, but still it was embarrassing.

Thankfully it was only an intermediately long amount of time before the pain stopped. Abruptly, Harry was aware that his entire right side was cold, he could feel cold air on his flesh, and that gravity was pulling him _hard_ to the right.

So he was laying on the floor, and he was naked. Not to mention that he was either too heavy than he remembered, or gravity decided it was a grand idea to suddenly increase.

Joy.

The next thing he noted, as he gradually rose from his shivering fetal position, was that the place he had woke in was a facsimile of a hellhole. For a brief moment, Harry considered that perhaps the catholic hateful views of his long-dead 'family' was true.

He scoffed; as if!

Applying his analytical mind to the situation at hand, he figured that the veil had dropped him in a random time and/or place. From the way the walls were painted in an unmistakable red hugh, it was a hostile one at that.

Harry reflexively went for his wand to cast a few Unspeakable detection charms, only to be reminded that he was still naked and therefore had no place to carry said wand.

He sighed; his wandless charms were never his strong suit.

What came back from the endlessly cast charms was disturbing to say the least. Instead of the forensics report that'd normally accompany the charms' completion, there was something more and at the same time, less.

There was a lingering feeling of something sinister with the addendum about the blood (as it was definitely blood) being infected with an unknown pathogen, long since dead.

Even then, 'dead' didn't' feel like the right word to describe it. It was more like 'dormant', as if it could come back in force, given any opportunity.

Harry had the sudden urge to be somewhere else.

With a sudden foreboding feeling, Harry spun on his heel to fire off a lightning fast sniper's hex where he expected a head to be. Such a foreboding feeling deserved nothing less than fatal.

He was right to think so, as his eyes registered a hulking beast of flesh pounce towards him, claws extended and frighteningly sharply filled maw wide.

It didn't take a genius to figure that the beastie wanted a piece of Harry, nor to put 2 and 2 together in that it was likely responsible for the mess on the… everywhere. However, Harry did find it exceedingly disturbing that the beast didn't make any noise in its preparation to strike; it was only due to Harry's practically preternatural instincts that saved him. It didn't growl in threat to incite fear, nor have any faint heartbeat, breath draw, or the sounds of clawed feet scraping the floor to give it away.

Quickly discarding the thoughts as unimportant - even momentarily - Harry still had a heavy-looking corpse to contend with.

Without thought, Harry dropped into a tactical rool to the side to avoid the sharp-dead- _wrong_ projectile. After popping up to a ready crouch, Harry eyed what he thought to be a dead flesh-body stumble to its feet with a gaping hole in its chest.

Apparently its head-height was a _lot_ taller than the average human's.

With muted horror and grim determination, Harry calculatingly eyed the cannonball-sized absence in its chest. He could clearly see a heart that was _not_ contracting _start_ to function under a facsimile of a ribcage.

Then it _roared_!

Despite the stable footing of his chosen combat form, Harry couldn't help but to stumble. The light from overhead lights flickered, life seemed to drain of colour for a moment, and worst of all, there were three distinct answering roars, with a possible fourth.

Giving a growl of his own, Harry brought both his hands together, palms facing forward.

With a snarl, he funneled his frustrations through his arms, and then with a smirk of an old memory of an older story he let forth a vicious bolt of intent and power.

Not many things could live without a head, right? Even ghosts tended to go a bit mad if they lost their mind somewhere their body couldn't find.

With a faint, "Off with their head!" the newly dubbed Hunter thudded onto the floor.

However loud the fallen Hunter might have been, even louder still was the yapping and yowling of three to four mighty beasts barreling to his position from different directions.

With a sigh and a 'dark' flying curse later, Harry donned a mushy cloak and huddled uncomfortably close to the foul-smelling corpse.

Hopefully the Hunters weren't cannibalistic.

It didn't take long after that the called allies found their way to the combat site.

Taking their positions in, Harry quickly came up with a strategy for the large (but still babylike sized version of the dead one) human-shaped creatures.

Among a disguised palm at the head of two sniffing beasties, Harry cast a Sniper's hex at each, effectively taking them down. Having gained the attention of the remaining one, he threw stealth to the wind and flipped himself behind the skinless Hunter for cover, however brief.

The plan worked as intended, as the Hunter had jumped over their fallen comrade rather than through, leaving them open for Harry to snap off one more head-bound hex, finishing the impromptu battle.

Taking a breather, Harry continued to take stock of his current situation as he remained ware of more creatures.

Once the heat of battle was over, though, he noticed that he had taken damage on his side simply from his nerves politely protesting his movements. When he inspected the wound, he noted that it both wasn't consistent with what the beasties would inflict, even glancing, and that there was some glittering still in the open wound.

Using his magic, he directed his nerves to report more than just their discontent.

The feedback was basically that he'd managed to take shards of glass into his body.

Considering that he was in what looked like an abandoned and infested subway station, it didn't really inspire too much confidence in the odds of the glass being _clean_. For all he knew, it could be anywhere from a broken bottle to a broken test tube.

Given Harry's brand of luck, it was probably a test tube with something nefarious inside.

Wilson was going to kill him after he healed him of his newest malady.

Harry always did have a knack for making medical professionals overly stressed, even if they were high-ranked unspeakable ones.

His face twisted into a reflection of the utter horror he felt, before morphing into a fit of righteous anger. One did not simply mess with a wizard's beard. He had spent one hundred years on that groomed beauty! He would rather be kicked in his old saggy balls than that!

He rose his hand to feel where his sorrow would exist in its bare entirety, but had paused with his hand halfway to his face.

He didn't have any wrinkles on his would-be spell-worn hands, no liver spots from late-night firewhisky indulgence, but at least he still had the joke tattoos of the deathly hallows on each hand, gained from said nights of firewhisky.

Even if they didn't float and change position magically like they used to.

Quickly giving a check over his (still) naked and obviously teenage-ish body yielded the result that he was now completely scar-free.

His attention returned to the gouge in his side. He just had to get a new body only to get it scarred again. From the way his magic had taken an interest in the area and started to push back against the area, it'd be a curse-scar and not able to be healed completely.

Harry sighed; what was with him and scars, anyway? Sometimes he really considered that his life was solely set up to entertain some deity somewhere.

He hated his life, sometimes.

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 **A/N: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of the new story, DRP. Please, do review as it does tend to become chapter-fuel. Oh, and I made the Grimoire stuff up on my own. I'll probably use my own spells unless I'm being lazy that day and decide to use 'cannon' spells.**

 **The Grimoire** **:**

Sniper's Hex: essentially acts like an exploding sniper round that penetrates armor. Not many things can survive it, not even a dragon. A spell of Harry's own design, based off of a sniper round.

Bolt of Intent and Emotion: Raw magic given a vague focus, and gaining semi-sapience from feeding off the emotion to accomplish the goal. Think patronus charm, but requires more power because the intent wasn't specified in the spell and can use any emotion depending on the need. It tends to have a leak of what the spell was made from. Again, like the patronus charm giving off a feeling of serenity, the case that Harry used gave off a line from Alice in Wonderland, because that was what gave him the idea of the intent. Very obscure branch of existing magic, and gives Arithmancers headaches for days.

The Flaying Hex: Technically a dark hex because it was once used as capital punishment until the infamous Dark Lord Obern The Ferocious used the hex in protest against the capital when used against his later-proven innocent brother. The last legal use of the spell (other than Unspeakables torturing people for information, where they'd use it with deliberately too little power put into the spell for only small strips of skin removed) was on Obern himself for his crimes against the Crown. Before it was used as capital punishment, it was used to defeather chicken and skin animals for their hide. That's the current publicly legal use, and the only widely known use for it, thankfully.


	2. Chapter 2: The Important Things

Chapter 2: The Important Things

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With a subtle ache in his side, Harry considered the raw hide that he still had covering his body. After only a moment's pause, he took the available skins and laid them upon the dirty ex-station floor and concentrated on a spell he learned for the original sole purpose of counteracting in-combat. As his magic left his body, Harry's wandless spell slowly aged and tanned the skins he had collected from his first kill in the new area he found himself in, leaving behind some odd, eerie leathers.

They reminded him of a cross between human and dragon leather.

He could immediately tell that anything he made from the leathers of the hunter would _not_ be comfortable, but at the same time, it would be _something._ Besides, Harry having always been the superstitious sort after his twentieth near-death experience, took the whole 'first kill's spoils' to heart. Since he was in an unfamiliar area, he considered the Hunter to be his first kill _in the area_ so he believed that the leathers would be overall better than any other in any aspect because of it, unless he he incorporated the two together or the other was a purposely enchanted item.

Without further ado, Harry had quickly strained the limits of his wandless transfiguration as he wove the new material into a facsimile of clothing for him. He easily used the bones of the fallen beasts to fashion buttons for a taut vest, an overcoat, and trousers. He carefully measured the material over himself before cutting it to specifications, and from that he had the skeleton of a leather vest, a leather overcoat, and very uncomfortable trousers that rubbed against his bits in the _wrong_ way. He took the heartstrings from the Hunter and its comrades much the same way a dragon poacher would take heartstrings form dragons in order to make string to magically bind the polished bone buttons to his clothing.

After deeming the ensemble complete, Harry had donned it without delay. From there, Harry made his way to where he hoped would be the surface of the planet. He hoped he could come up with a way home sooner rather than later, then he could come back to explore properly. Preferably with an elite unit or two; going off of the first fauna he had seen thus far, that was a necessity.

Harry had managed four steps before he was hit with a wave not too dissimilar to crashing from an adrenaline high multiplied by a factor of four. With a stagger to his every step, his lips letting a sigh through; he had substituted more skill for power than he was comfortable with.

With a prominent effort, Harry ignored the early signs of magical exhaustion, and finally emerged from the underground to a sight he was certainly not expecting.

In a way, the world he stepped into was a dark, inept necromancer's wet dream. All around where Harry stood, like a gawping firstie at the first sight of Hogwarts, was a veritable sea of bastardized versions of infiri. When he finally came out of his staring match with the blind, he was slightly ashamed for how long it took him to recover. Thankfully, he also noted that all of the shambling beasties didn't seem to show the slightest interest in him.

Being one for only glancing a gift horse in the mouth, Harry only took a cursory precaution before trusting that the shambling masses wouldn't notice him, even if he was up close and personal with one of them. After shrugging his odd fortune off, Harry walked off in search of some base essential items for his unplanned visit to hell.

First thing was first, he needed to find some undergarments since letting the leather rub up against him could not continue. With applying his inner Ginny, Harry set off to find some clothing shops. He found one on an obviously retail-oriented street with an obnoxiously large sign declaring both its brand and that it was having a seasonal firesale.

Harry was just happy that all the signs so far were in English.

Upon entering the building, Harry's attention was taken away from the displays around him to a single collective of items on the front desk that normally would be overlooked. It was a simple holder of gift cards and coverings for them, displayed for customer perusal, and for what Harry had in mind was perfect.

Harry singled one of the card coverings out randomly, and using a well-known colour-changing charm that Hogwarts students learn, Harry whitened out the paper. He took his left hand, cupped it, and placed it directly left of the paper. With his right index finger, he magically sliced open his hand, then proceeded to use that same finger as a quill and his blood as ink. He crudely fingerpainted onto the small piece of paper a variety of low-level runes: identification, interpretation, legilimens probing, information processing, self-camoflauge, and finally a cluster or two of small linguistics runes.

It took him three attempts to get them all correct since the entire process had to be completed in a finite amount of time.

When Harry had the finished item, he looked it over for any imperfections, and when he deemed it acceptable he spelled his unspeakable credentials to stick to his makeshift uniform. Giving a self-satisfied nod at his accomplishment, Harry continued on to look for some more comfortable undergarments. He found them in a pack of three, wrapped in plastic against outside influence, buried inside the crowded store.

He had had to shuffle past the hobbling monstrous populace in order to get to the men's section to begin with, and further still to find a changing room to use the fruit of his efforts. Once firmly inside the fragile room, Harry ripped open the plastic guarding, and giving a wrinkled nose look at the boxer-briefs, had used a simple scourgify on them in order for him to have a semblance of comfort in wearing them. He would have much preferred to wash them properly before they went anywhere _near_ his bits, but as it was, he didn't have that option. Giving a self-deprecating look at his current outfit, he thought he _really_ didn't have many options at all.

After changing, Harry gave an experimental wiggle of his hips, and counted his mission of comfort a success.

As Harry exited the department store, gently nudging the masses away from his path as he walked, Harry pondered his next move. Well, it didn't take long for him to do so, as he caught sight of an obvious jeweler's not far off. His decision made, Harry calmly made his way there, intent on finding some semi-processed and precious materials.

He decided not to ponder on his fortune of not running into any more of the hunters thus far, as he was a known practitioner of counting his (mis)fortune only to have it change for the worse. Thus, he ignored the fact that he was able to waltz through crowds of mutilated infiri, was not being pursued by swarms of hunters, or anything else the land decided to humour fate with.

Especially the fact that the jewelry he had just entered appeared to still be fully stocked.

Like a metaphorical kid in a candy shop with a stolen credit card, Harry magiced the items he needed out of their 'secure' places and into his possession. Not that they'd stay in the same configuration, of course, since he planned on appropriating the precious metals in the jewelry for other things. Having dubbed everything he had gathered sufficient thus far, Harry headed onward to a back door next to a conveniently placed stairway down to a presumed storage space.

The lights were on, so Harry needn't to fumble in the dark, but he still had to clear himself a place to rest. As it was, he was comfortable with simply sleeping on a cushioning charm on concrete.

That's exactly what he did, in a room with everything pushed up against the walls. And, despite it being a _very_ irresponsible thing to do, he did it anyway, because he _needed_ it.

* * *

 **A/N: So that's the second installment of DRP.**

 **I've decided that the Grimoire will only display the full explanation of spells/enchants/etc that are new in the story, otherwise it'll only show the name.**

 **The Grimoire:**

Sniper's Hex

Bolt of Intent and Emotion

The Flaying Hex

The Tanner's Spell: This is a spell that Harry had originally only intended to use in order to counteract in-combat. He had to do this because the Department of Mysteries had decided that they really didn't like the fact that an up-and-coming Dark Lord was doing their very best to twist and suppress knowledge. One of their main spells was the tanning spell, whereupon if it were to be cast on a still-living being, it would cook the skin they wore. They used it like the Death Eaters of Harry's past used the Cruciatus, only that it could more reliably be used in combat.

First Kill's Spoils: This is a superstition more than magic, but it does have its basis in magic. It started by hunters having a tradition where a new hunter would always get to use their first kill all to themselves. This was coming from a time where tribal hunters shared absolutely everything they brought back with the tribe. They had found that, if their shamans blessed the material it would gain strange properties. That finding evolved overtime to gain the attention of magic, to the point where magic automatically enforced the material without need of a shaman's blessings, though that same automation only effectively worked if it was killed through magical means.

An Unspeakable's Identification: Since Unspeakables regard their identities with the utmost secrecy, normally that would mean an Unspeakable wouldn't have need for an identification card. That wasn't strictly true. It was true that the badge didn't link in any way to the wearer for them to verify _identity_ , but it did have a blood connection to the wearer that was easily checked for credibility and very hard to forge or steal; they were made of blood for that reason. They also had other strange properties that allowed an unspeakable to blend into a scene, or take charge of a situation if they needed to. The runes the card was made of allowed for an unspeakable to gain the proper badge or identification of a proper, proportionate ranking in order to take charge of a situation that had gone wrong. This was to insure that in a situation where they were dealing with magic in a muggle setting, they were able to control the situation. It took what would have been a logistical nightmare, and turned it into a daydream.


	3. Chapter 3: Backfire

**Chapter 3**

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Harry was not a person that generally woke slowly on a normal day, thus when Harry was in a potentially hostile and unknown location, he'd already had his magic flaring at his fingertips in a ready crouch before he knew he was awake.

After his mind caught up to his reflexes, Harry stood down and went on with his plans for the day, after he'd freshened himself up a bit. It wouldn't do for him to be tracked down by his scent alone.

Once done, his attention turned to the delicate pile of items he acquired the previous day. Then, ignoring the grumblings of his stomach, he began setting up his wizard's workspace.

By following these proper procedures, Harry started with the small things, effectively he was drawing the details to the picture before the picture itself took form. At least, that was always how it felt with the student proper procedures. They were necessary, though, as every move a wizard made in the construction of their workspace took magic, and if not done carefully and conservatively, they'd find themselves drained or dead; if they attempted the main things before having a gauge of how much magic it would take from the small things, they would find themselves dead if they hadn't enough magic, mainly due to their core exploding.

Harry gathered a feel for how much magic it'd take for Harry to effectively use the space.

Thankfully, Harry didn't need the workspace to last long, since he planned on only enchanting or modifying molecular structures in two or three sessions.

Once Harry began to draw out the runes for the main and final section, cutting them into the floor with a practiced eye, he mentally readied himself for what was to come. All too soon the etchings were completed, and Harry took a breath before he magically opened his veins and telekinetically maneuvered the gushed blood into the carved-out gaps. Once the blood touched the stone, it flash-dried.

Along with the blood came Harry's magic, allowing for a better connection with Harry's future intentions and efficiency in powering ritual circles and being ready for use immediately.

Harry was more focused on the last part.

It was not an inconsiderable amount of power for Harry to complete the circles and runes, but he was able to continue with his plans for the day. He took a breather first, of course, but then he gathered the relevant items for his first creation of the day.

A 30 Carat diamond, 13 ounces of gold, 7 ounces of silver, 5 men's rings of platinum, 3 14-carat emeralds, and Harry was ready to make himself a focus.

It began with a flourish, as most things magical did, and a serious expenditure of energy. Harry acted as a conductor at an orchestra of swirling precious materials. Soon, given five minutes of continuous power input, the materials were indiscernible from each other, so fast were they moving. Soon, the heat within their containment reached a crescendo, dropping the metals involved to a liquid state, which Harry used to purify the metals, separating out the impure metals from the gold, silver, and platinum alloys. Once done, Harry had small amounts of pure elemental metals.

His posture changed from a conductor of symphonies to resemble that of a taunting martial artist. His limbs flexed as metals wove, stones were set into intricate jewelry, following a design that allowed for the most magically stable locations for a casting focus. Soon the focus took on the shape of a glove, but not a full glove. It was shaped like that of a spider's web, only that the lines followed a fractal pattern heavily dependant on the number 7.

There was one thing that didn't exactly jive with Harry, though, and that was the fact that he wouldn't be able to fit his hand into the finished product. That meant that before the focus was fully formed, Harry had to cast it onto his hand. His poor, poor hand that had never done him wrong before.

With a visible strain, Harry held his position, and gently shifted forward to not disturb the delicate magic he was working with, and finally was able to thrust his hand into the maelstrom of metals. He just needed to do it. With another sigh followed by a hiss of pain, Harry thrust his hand through the containment field of magic into the heat of hell beyond.

His skin blistered immediately, the insides cooking to a burnt beef jerky consistency. Wrinkles formed, along with charred segments where any liquid touched his flesh. He quickly got to work, not really one to torture himself unnecessarily, along with the fact that he knew he was slipping from the pain.

Normally, for that reason, something like what Harry was attempting required a partner to operate the forge for the items to be casted onto the primary's limbs. Harry didn't exactly have that option, so he weathered the storm.

Hastily, Harry forced the metals onto his flesh, swirling into each other in a spiral pattern, while the gems remained set, held in position where knuckles were, with the centrepiece gem within the palm of his hand.

Now, normally, when metals were embedded within the flesh, those metals were static, and did not allow for movement. They were solid metals, you see. Now, that didn't matter as much to Harry as the searing pain mixed with phantom pain of his nerves in a fiery death. Thus, Harry funneled all the energy focused on heat and telekinetic energy into healing his baked hand from a dead state into a useable state.

It was, in a word, _difficult_. Essentially, he had to beat the universe's universal rule of entropy to make the destructive forces revive his hand. Added onto that, it was always easier to destroy something (unless that was information) than it was to create it, let alone to fix it.

Unfortunately for Harry's hand, Harry hadn't been able to fully utilise these destructive forces before he felt his control over said forces start slipping. He was failing, and he knew it.

He didn't want to lose his hand, though, so he was forced to do something he really did not wish to. It was something drastic, something daring, and something that he would normally have fired an Unspeakable if they had attempted to do the same. At least he knew how stupid he was acting when Harry immersed his entire body into the vortex of angry energy.

The reason he had done this was that he would gain more contact area with what he was working on. The reason why _that_ was something he wanted, was the simple rule that the more contact area a wizard had with arcane magics, the more control they would have over that same magic. The reason why that was a _bad_ thing, was that while it was true it gave him more control, it also took a not inconsiderable amount of power to do so.

However, Harry was proud enough to say that he was good enough at thinking on his feet that he thought he would be able to find a way out of the mess he put himself into once he was fully in it. As his flesh and a great deal of his pain tolerance melted from his body, he had been lucky enough to be proven correct in his assumptions.

Quickly, Harry changed from channeling his energy directly from his body to funnel through the still-developing magical foci. At first, his efforts were sluggish, since the focus wasn't even close to completion. However, as Harry continued to develop the focus with his own core's magic as well as the already expended magical energy, that same energy increased in power while his control spiked.

With a sense of finality, Harry's new foci finished its formation, and Harry would have sighed if he had had functionality of his lungs at that moment. He knew that the only thing keeping his alive was his magic. Anyone normal would have perished in seconds, while he had lasted a full minute thus far.

Now Harry only had to deal with the leftover energy swirling around him, trying its hellish best to make him disintegrate. Resembling a burnt corpse with gold embroidery threaded throughout his body, Harry directed the energy around him to start to condense, fighting it every step of the way, and then absorbed it into the formed foci-fetus. The energy seeped into the metals, energising them in a way that only a phoenix feather would power a holly wood stick.

As much as he wanted to, he hadn't the time to revel in the feeling of the magic reluctantly settling, creating the feeling of magical ley lines throughout his body syncing with his own innate, natural ones from his core. His first act with his new foci was amplifying his own power, and letting his wash over his body, fixing and healing the to the best of its powerful ability.

Unknown to Harry, his magical exertion had detracted from its self-appointed role of his immune system. This had the unpleasant side-effect of letting the infected material in his side, that which he had gotten from his combat roll in a dirty subway station, to begin to fester in its own evolved viral way. As his magic was busy combating the self-destructive maelstrom, and his biology only left to the defence of trace amounts of basilisk venom, Harry began to become a type of patient zero for a particularly devious and incurable virus.

This virus ran into an issue, though, when it became under the attention of Harry's magic once again. As busy as it was, the magic of Harry's body could do nothing, and the quickly evolving into sapience virus knew this. However, it also knew that the distraction of protecting the host from the maelstrom would not last forever. From this, its extreme sense of self preservation kicked in, and the virus decided that it was in its best interest to be content with being symbiotic with both the magical energy permeating the host, and the host itself. To do that, it spread throughout the host, examining the connections between the host and the host's energy and preparing to evolve to imitate the magical energy's connection.

First, though, it needed to transform the biology of the host to do so. Under the guise of the pain originating from the heat, the virus worked to enter each individual cell in the host's body, changing it and combining them for them to gain a compatibility for the virus to nest in, and float throughout the body freely. They reverted the cells from their natural state into their base, origin form of the stem cell, and in many cases, had changed them into neurons for the virus' own thought processes while still maintaining their designated primary functions. The heart, lungs, and reproductive systems were a favorite of the virus.

Once the host was terraformed for the virus to be able to coexist with both the host and the magic, the virus began fulfilling its role in taking over as the immune defence system, and finding any way to improve the host. It started in the brain, where it found and destroyed signs of senility – just because the body looked young again, did not mean the innards were. It attached itself to the pre-existing immune system like the viral infection it was, but instead of turning the system against the host, it bolstered it.

It did so by many way, one in which it had found and subsequently analysed the Basilisk compounds that had stayed in trace amounts in the host's body. Once analysed, the virus had used its template in its effects both magical and biological to integrate it within the immune system. It effectively made Harry's bodily fluids some of the most dangerous toxic substances known to magical kind.

Now the virus, that which was effectively the main sustenance of and the being of Harry's body, need only lie in wait for the next opportunity to improve the host – Harry; when it did so, it would in effect be improving itself. It was a win-win scenario, and one that would lead to both Harry's acceptance while the magic had already done so.

It was then trivial for the virus to repair the damage done to Harry's body, especially with the magic's help in the matter. Where the cells touched the gold, the virus twisted them, using the malleable gold as well to effectively gain the most surface area connection between them. The virus only knew this to be a good thing based off what the magic had impressed upon him. It wouldn't have done so otherwise; heavy metals and biological beings do not tend to get along. Once fully integrated with each other, both heavy metals and cells, the virus finally completed the transformation from magical human to something entirely different: it re-connected all of the nerve endings and healed them.

Harry hollered in pain; pain so great that even he, someone that was so accustomed to pain, had to mentally disassociate himself from his body momentarily. He'd come back from his mental plane later, when he thought that the pain was over.

Thankfully, the magic had only taken a few seconds to win its final battle with the maelstrom of energy.

Energy that had originated from Harry, himself, ironically.

However, the magical energy left over from the forces absorbed into the magical foci now had to go somewhere. It had been subverted from its original mission outside of the body being the forge, ever sense the arcane magic and forces created the vortex within, and Harry stepped through the containment field. It couldn't just dissipate into the ether like where magical theory said that vanished items went, and it instinctively knew that it wasn't welcome or of the world it was on.

When it tried to go back into the core of the wizard that first spawned it, it found an immense resistance. The core had been working overtime to compensate for the fact that it was empty, as all of the energy of the wizard had been active on the outside. The core understood the energy working on the outside to be expended, and that it wouldn't return, so the core started manufacturing more.

The issue was the core no longer had the capacity to retain the magic that it was replacing. The core tried to accommodate all of the magic, forcing its solid shell to expand and make more room in order to accommodate its secondary functions. Unfortunately, it was a moot point, as the three factions of magic warring for the much sought-after space were making it too difficult for it to remain habitable for magic. Thus, the newborn magics, the magics that took it upon itself to defend the body, and the magics that were made with the intent of creation, extreme environments, and the eldest of the three forced the core into a detonation.

The eldest made no effort to circumvent the catastrophe to Harry – it had survived outside of the host, and could continue to do so even if it no longer had a direct purpose. The innate magics of the body that warred with the eldest was simply too exhausted from the invisible battle to spend a single spell – even if that spell was well known. The youngest, though, it was what saved Harry from a most grisly death, that of an exploded core.

It gathered itself, congealed into a gel that, on the magical level, would appear as though it were a slurry of mithril. In this state, it was the most intelligent it could get with its innately born knowledge. In this state, it also made the decision to consort with its newfound ally. The virus was less-than-amused when it was told its new host, especially when it had to edit its base nature in order to be within as well as the host's biology significantly in order to live there, was going to explode like a megaton probability bomb. All the virus wanted to do was incubate for a while and acquaint itself with its hopefully soon-to-be-friend, the host.

Not that it knew what a probability bomb was, what the ramifications for editing itself would entail, nor the name of the host which it would need sometime soon.

It did the horrifying viral equivalent of a sigh, but agreed to go along with whatever the not-fully-developed magic wanted, so long as the virus had a home when it all blew over. With such an agreement, the underdeveloped magic and the virus both launched a plan that effectively anchored the eldest magic to reside outside the body – the body simply didn't have the volume to accommodate that much magical energy, even if it were in a solid state. The eldest led no resistance – it had been tamed out of its insanity, and instead of now being a maelstrom of danger, became an outwardly aura of power. Of course, it still had ties to Harry's will, having been forged by Harry's core.

The virus and the magic with a plan then used the original intent of extreme environments and creation from the eldest, and it recreated the core – the veritable soul of the host. Using the virus' methods, and the magic's direction stemmed from self-preservation, it completed what the core couldn't. The virus and magic alike integrated the core directly into the body, the physical plane. The action had the side-effect of bringing the body slightly out of phase with the physical plane as well, and half into the spiritual plane, that which magic mainly existed and through which interacted with the physical.

The merger had an all entirely different side-effect of merging the virus and the tired magics together into one entity. It was very unintended by any side, but the newer entity of magical virus was honest enough to admit that it didn't really mind. All that it meant was that it was no longer an independent entity and was now subject to the host's will, but it believed that it also gained some as-of-yet seen advantages.

It was the youngest's magic's turn to do the mystical, magical equivalent of a sigh, and continued on with the work ahead.

The elder magic finally took interest in what the others were up to, having felt the odd rippling effect of the physical and spiritual merging together. It ebbed over and through the changes of the body, taking note of everything from the metals directly integrated into the biology to the implications of one of the most devastating viruses becoming magical and under Harry's control. It watched as the underdeveloped magics purified itself, but came out as something completely different than any magics that it'd seen back home. It watched as this magic spread out through the body and solidified itself into biologically compatible liquid crystal nodules attached to the new, strange nervous system the virus came up with.

It wanted none of that; it was perfectly content with staying the normal, predictably strange wizard's magic that it started out as, only now floating freely as an aura instead of locked away in a core, and act only if called upon by its wizard's will.

Save for maybe fixing a few mistakes here or there made by the other idiots the eldritch was symbiotic to, like making sure there were innate ley lines throughout its wizard's body so that it could actually tell if it was being called upon, and fixing the ridiculous attempt at a casting mechanism within the body. It should act as an amplifier of will, not power. The eldritch would supply the power – it had that in spades. What it didn't have was the will to use it, which is what the wizard need only supply, what with the lack of a core being a limiting factor.

Once all three of the factions within Harry were finished with their modifications, they began to lie in wait for the mind to wake.

 **Meanwhile, inside Harry's mind:**

I stared at him in contemplation, while he started back, confused curiosity written all over his face. "I have absolutely no idea what to do with you," I said to him. "The worst part is, you don't even know just how many pans you've ruined just by existing here, where you AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE!"

"Er, sorry?" Harry half-replied, half-asked. At least it's amusing that he doesn't even know how to reply.

Well, of course he doesn't if I don't. I'm Fate, Urðr, the Cosmos, Karma, Yuanfen, and on the rare occasions Omniscience and Upshot, all with a capital F, U, C, K, Y, O, and U, respectively. It's safe to say that if I don't know what's going to happen, then no-one will.

There's a very good reason why I'm still banned from all types of gambling, everywhere. Getting a relatively sudden idea, I hooked into it and juiced it for all it was worth:

"And that's another thing! You're supposed to be a veteran top-level Unspeakable badass and here we are, sitting in your mind having a cuppa and you're just apologising to a strange thought that entered into your mind! What has become of you?"

Harry's face screwed up in thought, and the scenery around us shifted to accommodate the rapid thought process. Instead of a mid-eighties upper-class sitting room with a roaring fire going, we now found ourselves immersed in a munitions factory going full-tilt in a mid-war economy. Huh, either I broke him even more, or I fixed him with just that.

Harry's well-oiled intelligent machine of a brain quickly set about purging me from his mindscape, and repairing any damage he could find from his previous mental state. I put up no resistance, even though as a deity I very well could have forced the issue.

It should be needless to say, I left with a great smile on my face. All he needed was a bit of encouragement, and that pain became an instrument of my will.

Ah, divinity.

* * *

 **The Grimoire:**

Sniper's Hex

Bolt of Intent and Emotion

The Flaying Hex

The Tanner's Spell

First Kill's Spoils

An Unspeakable's Identification

A Wizard's Core: Responsible for housing and creating magic for the wizard/witch to use.

Mithril: Thought to be solid magic, or in various states, as a type of metal. The element of magic, in other words.

The Maelstrom of Forces: Something went wrong in Harry's use of the forge, summoning powers of destruction alongside his own magic, powers that once summoned, needed to be released. Normally this resulted in a massive explosion.

Probability Bomb: A magical bomb that acts like a probability drive, only as a bomb. Its measurement in megatons is the radius of effect in relation to a megaton bomb, respectively.

 **A/n:** **I don't really know what to say at this point. Perhaps sorry for the long wait? I know how frustrating that can be, having been on the receiving side of these words more than the giving, but vOv. (That's a shrugging emoticon, by the way.)**

 **Hopefully this is the start of a roll I'll have later, but with the recent news that I'm going back to school after they were on strike, well… I see a lot of homework in my future. It might not be immediate as I think they're going to work to rule, but once that stops, hello take-home assignments and lab reports!**

 **Granted, it is college, so it is what I originally thought it'd be: a shit tonne of homework. It's what I'm paying for, after-all.**

 **Oh, and do tell what you thought of the meeting between Harry and Fate. It's a different take on the whole Harry being Fate's whipping boy. I don't think he is, Fate's not that bad, I think. It can be, but I like to think it's generally neutral.**

 **Anyway, have a take care!**


	4. Chapter 4: Awakening

**Big A/N: I always appreciate feedback from my readers, especially when I get constructive criticism since this is practice for me in order to improve my creative writing. That which I can't address in the story without breaking the fourth wall, I'll address here.**

 **Firstly, I'll address the… whatever the last chapter was. It was meant as a technical backside of the how and whys of Harry's magic, and what he'll be doing in this (and possably more, depending on how much I like it) stories. I should have probably noted that this is very much like a damn-near godlike Harry in this story. I didn't earlier, because I didn't know that it would be earlier.**

 **That being said, for those of you who don't like figuring out what I meant by the different powers from reading in-between lines or connecting lightyear-distant dots, I'm going to outright state what his powers will look like here:**

 **The nodules connected to his nervous system acts like and behaves like a seriously ramped up version of a biotic (Yes, like Mass Effect – I seriously love it when Mass Effect and [Prototype] are connected) only based on the idea that Mithril is the big brother to element zero. The Eldritch magic that permeates Harry's aura (and hence became his aura) act as the wizard's magic that Harry's used to, the magic that he'd been using ever since his first incident of accidental magic. The virus became the body itself, and in much the same way an average person would be able to flex their muscles so too would Harry be able to control the virus – with a bit of physiotherapy with the virus' mind being the nurse.**

 **A Wizard's focus normally amplifies power being directed from the wizard's core since normally the inner ley lines of a wizard would limit the flow. In this case that amplification isn't needed simply because all his power is resting** _ **outside**_ **of him, ready to be used. Instead Harry need only relay his instructions in what to do which is why his amplifies intent, giving him the ability to relay clearer instructions to his magic, since it no longer leaves the body already knowing what it needed to do in the form of learned spells.**

 **I also forgot to mention that the "divine intervention" in last chapter was supposed to be an Omake; it isn't part of the story and won't affect the story in any way.**

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Awakening**

When Harry woke for the first time in the centre of a thoroughly ruined forge, he made the instinctual decision that he couldn't be bothered just yet, and then promptly went back into the arms of Morpheus. When he woke for the second time, it was to the familiar stance of ready-to-battle, only to be replaced with the consuming pain of _hunger._

He's felt hunger before, he had distinctly remembered a time when he'd been without food for four days, even so much as a crumb of mould to sate his need. However, that time was nothing compared to the one he felt when he woke properly.

Perhaps he hadn't eaten in more than four days, then.

It was completely possible that he did. He had no way of knowing for just how long he'd been under the merciful care of his magical recovery, that same beautiful magic that forgot to duplicate the contents of his stomach so that he didn't have to feel as hungry as he did at that moment.

He quickly tested out his new magical focus by using it on himself.

Only for the spell to fail.

Momentarily confused, Harry tried it again, with the same results. He didn't bother with a third time, instead he tested first his focus by casting a levitation spell onto a nearby piece of rubble, only for it to slam into the ceiling. He wasn't embarrassed by his lack of control of his magical power through the focus – it would take getting used to channeling it through such a device – he then went on to testing his magical power.

Only for another poor piece of debris to shatter against the wall. He sighed; getting used to his own magical power was not something he wanted to ever do again, he already _reached_ his magical maturity damnit! That was eighty years ago, and now he was forced to adapt to his magical control like a newly minted adult! _That_ was embarrassing.

Well, there was no reason for fretting.

His body quivered. Harry paused; why did his body quiver? It did again, followed by an intense wave of aching hunger. Well, that explained it then, but it didn't exactly get across why his body quivered instead of his stomach rumbling and gurgling as it was wont to do in similar situations.

Well, it was just another issue Harry would need to investigate later. Or not, considering it'd put him in the same situation just then and the pain of hunger striking didn't instill him with any kind of desire to replicate the scenario.

Harry focused his attention on his assembled resources he'd gathered during his earlier raids. The food easily came into view, and Harry hungrily tore the preservation charms off the food, getting ready to 'pace himself' in a veritable feast. The food didn't even get close to his face before tendrils burst from all over his body and imbedded itself in the food. His first reaction was that of mild disgust; he didn't exactly think that it was all that appetising to eat with a flurry of tendrils, he had issues when people slurped up their food as it was. The reaction following was that of immense curiosity mixed with a sense of resigned acceptance. It was never something normal that happened to poor Harry.

Well, another item for him to add to the ever-growing list of items for him to experiment with.

His immediate need almost satisfied, Harry allowed himself the luxury of eating what he thought to be a full ration for himself, and then storing the rest away into a travel pack with the rest of his supplies. He didn't think that the loud explosion and odd happenings would go unnoticed for long; he needed to find a new home.

If only he didn't attract the attention of one of the beasts that he'd found when he first arrived on the god-forsaken planet.

It didn't happen directly, as far as he could tell, and it didn't happen suddenly either. Strangely, it happened when he was on the move from his previous position. He'd only made it a few steps away from his 'front door' into the sprawling mass of dead flesh. His body quivered, and Harry knew that from his earlier feast that it meant his body was about to reach out for some food. Then, it did just that.

The next few moments were a blur for Harry, even with his vast experience with combat under his belt. His body split at seams that shouldn't exist, launching itself at beings that shouldn't be able to walk around, and it was a longer time than Harry would like to admit before he managed to will his own body into any semblance of order once again. It was a veritable feeding frenzy. Only, now when he took a step forward, he could hear the ground beneath his feet groan in protest.

Well, that answered what happened to the conservation of mass when taking in ten-thousand percent of what he estimated to be his original bodyweight. With a thought and negligent wave of his focus-hand, Harry applied a featherweight charm to himself, unworried if it managed to be overpowered. He'd flown under his own power, after-all, so he was confident he'd be able to maneuver with the gravity seemingly cut off.

He was mildly curious to see how long it'd last, considering his horrifying lack of control in the previous display. _Or_ , he considered, _it's because my body appears to have changed on a fundamental level. Maybe the usual charms just_ can't _work._

His thoughts were cut off when he heard the telltale roar of the beastie he'd first encountered in the dead world he now called a hotel room; he had no illusions of staying on the planet longer than he had to, especially if there were no humans here.

He knew from his own training, being the trainer, and common sense that using an untested weapon in battle was never a good idea. Thus, Harry was less-than-confident in his abilities to stand up to one of – or was sounded like many – of the beasties in hand-to-claw combat with his at-odd body, wonky magic, and a lingering feeling of 'why me' from his teen years he thought he'd long since stamped out. So, Harry ran.

It was when he was running at a speed to put most top-of-the-line brooms to shame and was a good forty kilometers away from his previous position before he realised a few very important things. For one, he was right to think that he'd flub the lightening charm since he was basically flying over the ground, but he was still getting decent traction is that his feet somehow adapted to the situation of their own volition to account for the problem by sprouting spikes and grips out of his _shoes_. Two, he had an inexplicable urge to say 'meep meep'. Three, and one of the most dangerous, is that he was apparently being hunted.

It was another forty kilometers before Harry confirmed it by spotting an apparent roadblock ahead made of fleshy beings bridled with claws and bony spikes.

Harry glanced to a nearby skyscraper and put two and two together with his increased traction, lowered weight, roadblock, and scaling the side of the skyscraper.

Too bad common sense wasn't so common anymore, since he was breaking his own training in testing out his untested theory in what was shaping up to be a battle. With complete confidence, Harry ran at a wall, trying to confuse the waiting mass of muscle and pointy things into thinking he was heading for it. When he considered himself close enough he leapt off the ground, intent on letting his weird body figure out that he wanted it to latch onto the wall so he coul-

Unfortunately for him, just to add to his growing list of unfortunate events, Harry's weightlessness spell didn't lower his _mass_ per se. Instead, it simply dampened the effect of gravity on his mass. Harry forgot that very crucial fact, but thankfully his body still knew what its mass was. How his body remembered and knew something about fundamental physics, Harry didn't know, but he was very glad that it did. Instead of Harry's planned transferring of kinetic energy from completely horizontal to completely vertical, he instead managed to only get there halfway before he contacted the concrete wall. Now, he was already moving at a respectable velocity of a fast car and his mass was about ten thousand kilograms – or ten megagrams. So when he contacted the concrete wall, and his body proved to be hastily reinforced for the impact, he continued past the concrete wall. In fact, he literally came in like a wrecking ball, since he was about two times the mass of 'large' wrecking ball. He also left like one, as he had enough momentum to continue past the initial half of the building.

Harry was just surprised he didn't feel any pain past a vague feeling that the situation was bad, and he should not be in it. He was so surprised he wasn't treated to his usual pain-from-mistakes that he looked behind him only to see a veritable hole in the once-untouched skyscraper.

Slowed by his detour through a building, Harry continued his oddly shaped gravity-defined parabolic arc up towards its vertex, which also happened to be close enough to the side of another building. Quickly casting a momentum cancelling charm on himself once he caught up with the side of the building, Harry allowed his feet and hands to latch themselves onto the side of the building.

It was when he reached the top of the building when Harry realised that he was about three times the size of a normal human being. Sure, it made sense in a strange sort of way: all the raw _human meat_ had to go somewhere. He just hoped that it wasn't permanent; it would be a real pain in the ass for him to enter any sort of doorways. That, and it would be awkward for him to explain to a muggle. They might just shoot him on sight because of all the insanity infesting the island.

At least he wouldn't ever be teased that his own children were taller than him again. He blamed the Weasley genes coming through; his late wife blamed his bad upbringing.

Shaking memories back to the land of the forgotten, Harry continued with his task – running away from his pursuers so that he can get more situated. Then, then he'd decide what next to do. It was as good a plan as any that he'd had.

Meh. Not all had to be thought about in advance – he'd taught many of the up-and-coming Dark Lords and Ladies that before he'd killed them, and in killing them.

Only, he did need to find a way of getting away from his rabid fanbase before they overran him and ate him. It was already night before he had an inkling of how they were even tracking him. Of course, it was through scent! Harry felt like he should have seen that one coming, since the besties had a bit of a snout and not much in the way of eyes. They did have them, eyes, though they were an odd red-ringed purplish hue.

It was another hour of testing before Harry confirmed that it was something transmitting through the air, yet it wasn't his _scent_ per se, since he'd tried every form of noise-cancelling, scent-concealment, and stealth-affinity spell. He even soared through the air, building to building, just in case it was connected to something about the vibrations themselves in the objects he interacted with. That was the point in which his body shivered, and liquified into a morass of biological components. His world revolved around the sense of touch in the form he unwillingly found himself in, where he could feel himself slowly leaking into the cracks in the concreate he'd previously landed upon, and then further into the ground below. The soil was clingy, the concrete rough, and his panic justified.

It only lasted a minute, but it was a minute he never wanted to repeat ever again. The fact that he felt fundamentally cleaner afterwards only mildly pacified him, along with the fact that the hunters could no longer 'scent' whatever it was his body was releasing and getting past his scent-concealment charms.

* * *

Harry looked to the sign hanging to the side of the modest building among the skyscrapers surrounding it. "Sirta Foundation," its proud lettering announced, followed by, "Non-profit biomedical research." Harry wondered on the wisdom of announcing themselves to be a biomedical research facility when humans tended to be quite diverse and radical in their ideology, historically speaking. Giving a shrug, ignoring his luck as always, Harry entered the building proper.

He pushed open the surprisingly unlocked glass front doors, and smirked when there was no blaring alarm to alert anyone of his presence. Proudly situated on the door was the security company responsible for the shameful security: Blackwatch Inc. "We take our client's security seriously," was their motto. Harry thought they needed to update it.

Harry wasted no time in heading further into the building, on the search for one of their biomedical labs. He wanted to find the underlying cause of what had happened to his body from his botched attempt at using a forge. There was no way, in his experience, that the magic had up and decided to mess with his biology at such a fundamental level without any intent or symbol in that direction. It should have either did what he asked of it, destroyed him, or did what he asked in a way he didn't expect but still within the parameters. Being able to spontaneously burst into liquid to figure out a way for your body to figure out – on its own – how to stop something from hunting you was not within those parameters.

It was within one of those labs where he'd found out that perhaps the non-profit organisation wasn't exactly all that they said they were. There was equipment in one of the rooms that didn't exactly scream ethics, as live subjects were tied town on operating tables, still struggling to get out of their bonds even with their chests torn apart for their complete lack of insides to be on display. He found cages filled with dissected animals, torn apart by each other, and paws torn and bloody by scratching at the wireframe walls.

There was one room that was filled with screens, powered by what Harry assumed to be an on-sight backup generator, displaying a roomed hunter along with another room filled with desssicated bodies – they'd obviously died of thirst, going by the image of the corpses. The camera tag beside the recording time on the hunter was 'subject H23441', while the one depicting the human bodies was simply 'Bait'. Harry shivered, and it had nothing to do with hunger or cold.

He'd seen some dubious things during his tenure as an unspeakable, but what he found in that facility was quickly topping that list.

Desperate to understand exactly what was going on in favour of relearning his own biology, Harry set off for an information terminal.

* * *

What Harry found in a terminal behind an office door with a 'branch director' title plastered onto it, was disquieting, in that he made quite a few startled and angry noises from what he found there. It was buried underneath e-mails and corporate password-protected servers, while some were offline and Harry had to bring the ones he could back to life. Needless to mention, Harry had busted out all his skills in corporate and international espionage just to get what he considered scrapes. He took all the nasty things he said about Blackwatch if they were responsible for their network and computer security.

They were still terrible, though, since Harry wasn't supposed to gain anything as incriminating as he did. Then again, it wasn't like they had any reason to believe that they had to keep out a world-class intelligence agency worker. Wasn't really his problem, though.

From what he surmised, and an oversimplification of the data he'd found, Harry had contracted a type of super virus that the local not-entirely-benevolent organisation had been experimenting with in the name of 'vaccinating' it. Well, the flubbed the process along the way, and had made a more dangerous version that had apparently been released in a subway station. Apparently, he contracted this virus _in_ that subway station, from what he could tell. It would certainly explain the odd happenings of his body without his explicit permission, though not why he wasn't made into infiri like the rest of the humans on the island. It was possible his magic was a catalyst to that effect, even going further to say that the forge was involved since it happened after he was

It also appeared that the rest of the world went dark, considering what he received from what should have been the internet. It wasn't fully functioning to where he knew it should have considering the technological state that the people that lived there enjoyed. Some servers still pinged, but there were many that were shut down and Harry assumed it had to do with power grids failing due to lack of maintenance. The ones that he knew were powered by green energy and thus were less labour intensive to maintain were mostly pinging back.

It meant it wasn't an incident isolated to just the island he was on. It meant the entire world was affected.

Harry sighed, and considered all the items he'd found together, forming a nice big picture for him to look at.

It was, in a word, ugly. That wasn't even considering the ramifications of legalising human testing due to the outbreak of a world-ending plague.

He simply could not believe that humanity, lovably-stubborn and infuriatingly adaptable humanity, had managed to be wiped out by a plague-style pathogen that'd been found in a little-known country town. Redlight, they called it, and then when they accidentally made their own, worse version they called it Greenlight in honor of subject Green that they'd played at human testing attempting to find a cure to the Redlight outbreak in Hope, Idaho.

Subject Green became the greenlight virus by the Sirta Foundation playing at inoculating a pregnant woman with the supposed inoculation to Redlight. They just didn't realise that they'd make something a lot worse than the original plague-like strain. The inoculation killed the woman with the undiscovered child still 'living' on inside the dead mother. That child, whom had been infected with a mutated strain that the microbiologists thought was inert and a proper inoculation instead had instead latched onto the stem cells permeating the fetus' body. It mutated further, building in the genetic code within the stem cells, and the infantile brain, blood, skin, and other cells that had already been formed at the time. Ut applied it to itself, and consequently became self-aware.

The scientist's speculation continued in just how the mastermind behind the Redlight virus was borne. They supposed that a self-aware pathogen meant that it knew that it was inside of a host that it wasn't normally. Pathogens of all kinds normally never want to kill their hosts. It would mean that they'd have to look for a new host, or die. It was the equivalent to a human burning down their own house. It was idiotic. However, since the pathogen permeating the dead woman and dying fetus knew it was in a dead woman and dying fetus, it sought to rectify it.

It unknowingly re-created the effects of its mother strain. Only, it did it _better_. Instead of an eternally shambling, _hungry_ body attempting to gain more sustenance for the pathogen, it became inter-connected.

It could no-longer be classified as a single-cell organism like bacteria, or less-than-alive RNA/DNA encapsulated in a single cell like a virus. It was a network of parts communicating with each other, infected cells acting as diodes, the nucleus holding the Boolean values of 'yesses' or 'noes', and the body itself acting as the circuit itself.

That was a pale example, though, as even one gram of DNA had the potential to hold around four-hundred and fifty-five exabytes of data. A human body also had about sixty grams of DNA in its body, on a rough average. That meant that the new form of life, later to be named greenlight once found, had about twenty-six point seven zettabytes of memory storage, filled to the brim with human evolution. Granted, a lot of that data was redundant as many cells were of the same type and functioned in the same way. However, it also meant horrifyingly enough also didn't take long for the network of 'yesses' and 'noes' communicating with each other, utilising methods not dissimilar to machine learning algorithms, to understand that neurons were exceptionally better at data processing than strings of Boolean values.

It created itself a brain.

With this new brain, decentralised to allow fair access to the flittering infectious material that would be associated most closely to a virus by sight under a microscope. Well, before that same 'virus' lookalike found out a way to build itself into a form of vocal cords to create an ultrasonic wave matching the exact frequency required to break the glass containment and then proceed to infect anything in contact with the air, even bypassing filters.

Such was the power of a brain.

In fact, with that same brain, the greenlight prototype had taken hold of its own body and exerted enough control to escape from the body bag that it was stored in. It didn't take long after that for it to become a figurehead, and a mind behind the Redlight virus. It became a thinking mind behind the infestation that was Redlight, and from there, it spread across the world, killing all.

It made Harry incredibly angry. All the inhuman testing, for nothing. All the pain and suffering, for nothing. Even more, all of Harry's effort in finding some civilisation before finding a way home, for naught.

Worse still, Harry knew that he wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone, either. He couldn't just leave Mother Earth crawling with humanity's mistake, he also couldn't just take what was recorded in the archives at face value; Harry needed to see for himself the purported absence of humanity.

* * *

 **The Grimoire:**

Sniper's Hex: Chapter 1

Bolt of Intent and Emotion: Chapter 1

The Flaying Hex: Chapter 1

The Tanner's Spell: Chapter 2

First Kill's Spoils: Chapter 2

An Unspeakable's Identification: Chapter 2

A Wizard's Core: Chapter 3

Mithril: Chapter 3

Maelstrom of Forces: Chapter 3

Probability Bomb: Chapter 3

Hunger-alieving charm: A spell that would essentially duplicate the contents of one's stomach so that they wouldn't feel the effects of hunger. Due to Gwamps Law, it's impossible to create food, but by duplicating the food already there it effectively circumvents this. This means that there has to be something in the subjects' stomach in order to work. It wouldn't work for a vampire, for example, because they don't have a stomach where the blood is stored.

Weightlessness Charm: Weight is calculated by mass multiplied by the force of gravity in the area that the weight is being measured. This charm doesn't cancel out the _mass_ portion of the calculation, probably due to the ineptitude of wizards in matters of science, but it almost cancels out the effect of gravity on an object. Thus, something that would weight 200 pounds would now weigh about 10 pounds, but would still retain their mass of 100 kilograms. Antigravity at the flick of a wand!

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 **A/N: So there's that.**

 **Hope you all enjoyed. I hope that I left this chapter in a good place. I originally planned for Harry to just leave the Earth to its fate, but then realised that it'd be rather out of character for Harry considering how I plan for him to act in this story, and his alternate history.**


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